E-Government in the Republic of Croatia: Current State and Challenges

Introduction

The last few decades have witnessed the strong development of information and communication technology. ICT has become indispensable in all human activities. Information technology changes social, business, cultural and administrative relations, enables new forms of access to information, increases the possibilities of interaction between people, companies and institutions. The development of information and communications technology has a strong impact on the private and public sectors, leads to the democratization of knowledge and information, and reduces the importance of physical proximity and personal contact. As a result, the needs, habits and demands of citizens, businesses and the state administration are changing. ICT-assisted tasks are performed faster, more accurately, informed decisions are made, collaboration is not limited by geographical distances, and costs are lower. ICT has also become the basis for the digital transformation of government and public administration.

Currently, there are more than 5,800 public authorities in the Republic of Croatia. From the analysis conducted on a sample of 460 public authorities, it was determined that 152 bodies or 33% of respondents own at least one of the e-services. (Central State Office for the Development of the Digital Society, n.d.). Most services, developed by public administration bodies in the Republic of Croatia, were closely linked to the service provider (e.g. the Ministry or an agency). Services have developed pointwise, each body for itself, without any broader plan and strategy. This way of providing services did not lead to significant use of e-Government services, because citizens had to have the credentials of that service provider for each service, which was very impractical. Of course, any integration of information or services, which involved the collaboration of different public authorities, was impracticable. Therefore, in April 2013, the Government of the Republic of Croatia decided to launch the e-Citizens project “which will enable access to public information and information on public services in one place, secure access to personal data and electronic communication between citizens and the public sector” (National newspapers - Official Gazette of the Republic of Croatia, 2013). The system was put into operation at the end of May 2014, or according to official data on June 10, 2014 (Government of the Republic of Croatia, 2015). By the decision of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, e-Citizens is an Internet platform that is conceived as a unique place of access to all services offered by e-Government. Access to e-Citizens is authenticated and authorized through a unique security system (National Identification and Authentication System). NIAS accepts several types of credentials, different levels of security (Government of the Republic of Croatia, n.d.e). This avoids the need for more credentials to access more services. A great advantage of a single entry point is the ability to monitor the intensity of use of the system and individual services. The e-Citizens system has applied the principles of interoperability in connecting the system of basic registers. In addition, the role of public administration has changed from passive (information provider on request) to active. State administration bodies can proactively send messages and inform the user about his rights and obligations, without any prior request or intervention of citizens. Immediately after the start of the e-Citizens system, the Law on State Information Infrastructure was adopted, which “established the rights, obligations and responsibilities of competent public sector bodies related to the establishment, development and management of the state information infrastructure system, establishment and management of public registers and conditions. the state information infrastructure must ensure, concerning public registers, as well as the use of a common basis for secure data exchange within the state information infrastructure system, a common identification and authentication system, unique points of interaction with citizens and other users “(National newspapers - Official Gazette of the Republic of Croatia, 2014). With the launch of the e-Citizens system and the adoption of this law, the direction of further development of e-Government in the Republic of Croatia has been defined. All new electronic public administration services are programmed with the basic requirement that they are accessed through the e-Citizens system.